


The Devil Clawing Its Way Out

by WriterJace



Series: The Corona!AU no one has waited for [4]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: And so do I, Gen, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, RLS, Whump, Willis-Ekbom Disease, aka the hardest thing to describe ever, kind of, restless leg syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:48:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23891080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WriterJace/pseuds/WriterJace
Summary: Matt was decidedly not fine. He desperately needed to move, to run, to punch something, to get this tension out of his body. It felt like... It felt like static in his limbs. It felt like a chainsaw was rattling through his bones. It felt like Matt had the devil inside of him and it was clawing its way out.
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Series: The Corona!AU no one has waited for [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1702345
Kudos: 36





	The Devil Clawing Its Way Out

**Author's Note:**

> I don't have a diagnosis for RLS but it seems like the best fit for what I'm experiencing and I can't really get a diagnosis right now. I did my best to describe it but... yeah, it's pretty indescribable.

It felt like static in his limbs. It felt like a chainsaw was rattling through his bones. It felt like... It felt like Matt had the devil inside of him and it was clawing its way out.

On the first day, Matt had been fine. After packing everything and making their way through the full subway stations to Foggy’s home, it was nice to relax.

On the second day, he had been fine. Lying around and doing nothing was a luxury he didn’t often get to enjoy. That night, running away had given him the opportunity to stretch his legs.

On the third day, he had been fine. A maybe restless, maybe, but so was Foggy as he searched the apartment for his book several times. Plus, he’d got to run again that night, and he’d completely tired his muscles out by climbing two buildings.

On the fourth day, Matt was decidedly not fine. He was tired from not having slept much the past three nights, which tended to make him cranky despite all of Stick’s instructions regarding having control over his own body. He was cranky and he was _restless_. He desperately needed to move, to run, to punch something, to get this tension out of his body. It was like pent-up energy, but negative. It was –

It was a feeling Matt was well acquainted with by now. When he was a child, his grandmother had told him that the Murdock boys had the devil in them, and at the time he didn’t know what she meant. Were Murdock boys evil? His father didn’t seem evil to him. At the time, he hadn’t spent much time thinking about it, it was just something weird his grandmother said, but a lot of things adults said could seem weird to children.

Now he knew what she’d actually meant. There was something inside of him, and sometimes it lay dormant, but sometimes it would awake and rage and fill Matt. The only way to appease it seemed to be to fight. For Matt that usually meant boxing until he was tired out. Sometimes, that was the only way he could focus on his studies or get to sleep, to punch until he felt like he couldn’t raise his arms anymore. And hope that it wouldn’t come back.

Sometimes it came back within the day. Those were bad days.

This was not a bad day. It was worse. There was nothing Matt could do to find true relief. All the gyms were closed. The apartment had only four rooms and a hallway, and there were too many people who would get annoyed if Matt started pacing the rooms. Matt was in _agony_.

He got up at night and did push ups because tiring out his muscles was the only way he could fall asleep. It still didn’t feel like enough. He tapped his feet, flexed and unflexed his biceps, anything to stimulate his muscles. It wasn’t enough. Matt was going mad and there was nothing he could do.

“What’s up with the pacing, man?” Foggy asked.

“Sorry,” Matt said.

“Are you okay? Going stir-crazy?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to go on a walk? We can in emergencies, and I think you pacing a hole in our floors counts.”

“Sorry,” Matt said again.

Foggy snorted. “Only you would apologise for that. So, walk, yay or nay?”

Matt considered taking the offer, but... “It wouldn’t help.” At this point he wasn’t even sure a run across the rooftops would help, and that wasn’t something he could do during the day anyway.

“O...kay? What’s going on that can’t be fixed with a walk, then? Is there any other way I could help?”

What was going on was that they were on day ten of lockdown and Matt felt like he was always about ten seconds away from exploding. He needed to _move_. He needed this to stop or he might go inside from the never-ending shrieking of the devil inside of him.

But gyms were closed and keeping six feet distance did not make for good sparring conditions, so instead Matt tried for some release by relaying what was going on inside of him to Foggy to the best of his abilities.

Matt told Foggy about feeling too full of energy, about not having any relief, about feeling like he was going insane if he couldn’t move.

Foggy didn’t tell him he was just stir-crazy like everyone else. He listened, and then asked Matt if he could think of anything that might help. About what Matt would do if they weren’t stuck in this apartment. Matt told him about running and boxing, though he was careful not to reveal just how capable he was at both of those things for someone without sight, and Foggy listened.

There wasn’t much that Foggy could do, of course. But Matt thought that maybe just talking about it had relieved a little bit of the pressure inside of him. It was still there, the devil still just beyond the surface, but Foggy had helped.

The next day, Foggy came to Matt first thing in the morning and told him, “I think you have something called Restless Leg Syndrome. It’s a neurological sensory disorder. Come and tell me whether this description here sounds like what you’re experiencing.”


End file.
